[June 20, 2016] This was quite a strange rereading experience. Two years after my original read, I came back to discover that this story resonated so much with me originally because I read it at the right time. It is a story about grieving that found me after a time of personal grief and I loved it. Perhaps this idea is best summed up by a quote from this very book:

"People need other people to feel things for them," she said. "It gets lonely to feel things all by yourself."

I won't lower my rating to anything under five stars, but I think I walked away from this reread knowing that this book isn't for everyone and it isn't for every time. That said, I still truly appreciated it for it's disarmingly simplistic tale. It's so steeped in fairytale qualities and tropes that it's easy to be lulled into a sense that the story is doing less than it does. It's easy to see this story of a girl trapped in an attic by a cruel stepmother and take it at that face value instead of seeing that just one step deeper, it is really about a girl after the death of her father, trapped in a world without color and life, locked in a room of grief and inaction, spurred into action by the idea of putting her father to rest.

Perhaps now removed from that time of grief, I was also struck by how much the story also commented on the injustice of life. Certainly that is something one can dwell on after loss. There are many cartoonishly bad people in this story, but there is also a lot of commentary about how need sometimes pushes people to be blind if not bad. Plus, we get the sense of how unfair it is that this has all happened to Liesl, but also to Po and Will and Mo.

This story will always have a special place in my heart and I've confirmed that it is definitely one I can revisit across my life. Plus, I found out that Jim Dale is the narrator of the audiobook and he was as wonderful as he always is. He fit the story perfectly.

[July 28, 2014]

Gorgeous.

I feel like I always start reviews of books by Lauren Oliver this way, but Lauren Oliver and I have an ongoing love/hate relationship. No, she doesn't know that. And it's more love than hate.

For all of the probelms I've ever had with her stories, I typically cannot speak ill of her writing style. She's good at the writing thing, and you can arguably say that here, she is at her best.

Liesl & Po is a middle grade book, but dismissing it as just that is a disservice to the story. Oliver talks about dealing with a personal loss and using this tale to explore that, and to me, it's apparent in every carefully crafted page. There are big themes of love and life and death here, of friendship and moving on, that were perfectly paired with the simplicity of the story and innocence of the main character.

In fact, one of the biggest issues I've had with Oliver in the past was world building, but I think here she gets it right. She created a lovely vehicle for her story and it resonnated deeply with me.

I've always been a sucker for stories with fairytale qualities, and perhaps if that is not true for you, you won't enjoy this. However, don't write it off simply because it is middle grade.